SUMMARY

When switching from the Compositing workspace to a NukeStudio workspace such as editing or conforming, a progress bar may appear stating 'Playback cache initializing'. This article explains the cause and purpose of the progress bar.

MORE INFORMATION

The display of the 'Playback cache initializing' progress bar is an expected behaviour caused by NukeStudio having to start caching the footage from your timeline, when switching from the Compositing workspace to a NukeStudio workspace. The caching process will ensure the playback can use the cached version and offer better performance.

The message appears to notify that this process is happening, otherwise, if there was no message, users might attempt to start playing their media only to see that it plays back staggered as the footage has not had time to cache properly yet.

The progress bar will commonly appear if you have very high cache preference settings and try to cache large amounts of footage; in this instance the progress window may take a long time to complete.

Please be aware that while this caching message appears, you can continue moving around in the timeline and setting comps to rendering etc.

If you have a fast enough read speed then we would recommend reducing your cache settings and localizing the footage instead. This would mean that less data would have to be cached into memory when switching to a NukeStudio workspace, so the 'Playback cache initializing' window wouldn't appear for as long. Also, if you have fast read speeds then the recache on the timeline would happen very quickly.